The World Health Organization on Tuesday issued new guidelines for the use of antibiotics in livestock, calling on farmers and the food industry to halt the routine usage of these drugs in healthy animals.
The guidelines are meant to improve global antibiotic stewardship, thereby curbing rates of antibiotic resistance and reducing use of antibiotics that are medically important to humans in animals. In some nations, about 80 percent of antibiotics that are medically important to humans are used in the animal sector.
"Scientific evidence demonstrates that overuse of antibiotics in animals can contribute to the emergence of antibiotic resistance," said Kazuaki Miyagishima, MD, PhD, director of the WHO's department of food safety and zoonoses. "The volume of antibiotics used in animals is continuing to increase worldwide, driven by a growing demand for foods of animal origin, often produced through intensive animal husbandry."
The WHO guidelines were informed by a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health, which found restricting antibiotic use in food-producing animals reduced the presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria among these animal groups by as much as 39 percent.
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